Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Monday, April 6, 2009

North Korea 'Nukes' Obama Blather

By Alan Caruba

There’s one thing to be said about North Korea; it knows how to make the United Nations, President Obama, and all talk of ending nuclear weapons a very bad joke.

Presidents since the days of Harry Truman have been talking about a world free of nuclear weapons and that is just not going to happen. They are possibly the best deterrent on Earth when it comes to the potential of being invaded. Like the Colt revolver in the days of the Wild West, nukes are the great equalizer among nations.

Every time India and Pakistan get really angry at each other, someone in the room reminds their respective leaders that the other has nukes. After that, it’s a nice chat between diplomats over a cup of tea and some lovely cookies.

Japan, a nation that knows something about being nuked by two atomic bombs, has been reluctant to add nukes to their arsenal. The increasing belligerence of North Korea, however, is likely to change that. The umbrella of protection that the United States has provided since the end of World War II has been giving way to the realization that Japan needs its own defense capabilities.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations we witness once again how utterly useless it is. When you have China sitting as a permanent member of the Security Council, you’re not likely to get any action regarding North Korea. It provides China with the leverage to make the West and other nations worry a great deal about sales to nasty people in Iran and elsewhere.

It would not have surprised me at all to learn that, after letting the North Koreans begin building a nuclear facility in Syria, the Chinese slipped the map coordinates to the Israelis.

Why no President has ever simply sent in the Air Force to bomb the known North Korean locations of missile launch sites and facilities is answered with one word: China.

What makes this even worse is the long record of “humanitarian” aid that North Korea has received from the United States over the years.

A 2006 State Department report reads as follows:

“Since 1995, the United States has provided over $1.1 billion, about 60% of which was paid for food aid. About 40% was energy assistance [oil] channeled through the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the multilateral organization established in 1994 to provide energy aid in exchange for North Korea’s pledge to halt its existing nuclear program.”

“U.S. assistance to North Korea has fallen significantly over the past three years, and was zero in FY2006. The KEDO program was shut down in January 2006. Food aid has been scrutinized because the DPRK government restricts the ability of donor agencies to operate in the country. Compounding the problem is that South Korea and China, by far North Korea’s two most important providers of food aid, have little to no monitoring systems in place.”

North Korea is not just “a rogue nation”; it is a gangster nation that has long engaged in every form of criminal activity you can name. In addition to its weapons program, it is a major counterfeiter of U.S. and other currencies. It has imprisoned countless thousands of its own citizens in labor camps.

I am reminded that George W. Bush named it as one of his “Axis of Evil” that everyone got upset about; naming Iraq and Iran as the other two elements. I already miss his refreshing candor.

The deterrent to doing something or anything is always the possibility of setting off a war.

This raises the question of why China would ever want to go to war with its chief debtor--us. As to the Russians, they can beat up tiny Georgia, but couldn't even conquer Aghanistan.

And, finally, the US military is stretched very thin these days after six years of warfare in Iraq.

So there is going to be a lot of rhetoric and no real action.

North Korean is just one of several problem or rogue nations to worry about. We still haven't been able to resolve the genocide going on in the Sudan, Myanmar is a military dictatorship, the Palestinians are trouble, et cetera.

And then there is Iran and that job is going to be left to the Israelis...who would then be denounced by a very grateful world.

When bush said he was going to invade Iraq because he just had a hard on for Mr Saddam Hussein, North Korea said they would build nuclear bombs and that the U.S. was not going to do anything about it.North Korea didn't have oil, so illiterate bush decided to go ahead with his ill conceived, retarded plan to invade a sovereign Iraq which had nothing but oil. Now north Korea has nukes, and you are blaming Mr Obama for that? I think you need to rethink your position.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.